How to make your copy more efficient to write, edit, read and optimize

How to make your copy to write, edit, read and optimize from Rusty Cawley

6 simple things you can do today to make your B2B content easier for Google to find and to rank

SLIDE DECK:

TEXT VERSION:

Making it easy for Google and other search engines to find and rank your company’s business-to-business web pages used to be all about what we now call “black hat” techniques: stuffing, stacking, misdirecting, cloaking, swapping, baiting-and-switching, and all sorts of other nefarious tactics.

Google has gone a long way toward changing that in the last two years. Three significant updates – known as Penguin, Panda and Hummingbird – to Google’s search algorithm are eliminating these tactics, and punishing them. If you use these techniques, Google may sentence your web site to its version of the Phantom Zone.
When Google users enter their search terms, they want Google to point to the pages that best meet their needs. Google’s updates are making it easier for Google to do just that, by finding and ranking web pages based on how well they meet the needs of the Google user.
There are six simple things anyone can do to help Google find our B2B web pages and treat them fairly.  Keep in mind, Google sees only text. It is blind to everything else. So we’ve got to create text that Google’s web-bots can easily recognize, quickly analyze and accurate rank.

Identify your keywords

We need to decide exactly what our web page is about.  What is the subject of the page? Do we want to answer a question, solve a problem, or just to provide information our customers are likely to seek for online? (For example, this post is designed to answer the question:  “What can I do to get Google to pay attention to my B2B web content?”)
Once that is settled, we have another question to ask: If prospects or customers are looking for a page like ours, what are the search terms they are most likely to use? What you need is what we call a “keyword,” which can be a single word like “widgets” or a short phrase like “widgets for oil producers” or “how to use a widget.”
You can start by brainstorming with your marketing, sales and PR teams. If you need help, there are plenty of online tools, like Google’s Keyword Tool. If you want to get serious, put together a focus group of prospects and customers to do their own brainstorming, or take an online poll, or (if you have a strong Facebook or Twitter following) try crowdsourcing.
Do your best to narrow down your choices to just a primary keyword (or key phrase). If you have runner-ups, you can always work them into your post’s body text. But it is important to agree upon a primary keyword as the foundation for creating a web page that Google will love.  For the purposes of this page, I’ve narrowed my keywords down to this phrase: “SEO for B2B.”
According to my research using Google’s Keyword Tool, Google users rarely enter this search phrase. So why use it? Because anyone who does use that search phrase is likely to be someone who is really interested in this information. Also, there’s very little competition for that phrase, so I have a better chance of ranking high on a search results page.

Include your keyword in your page’s web address

Also known as the URL, the web address is the page’s unique identifier. For example, the URL for this page is  http://rustycawley.typepad.com/realityincopywriting/2013/11/seo-for-b2b.html.  Note that I included my key phrase for this page as a suffix to my site’s main URL. This will encourage Google to point users to my page if they enter “SEO for B2B” as a search term.
To add your keyword to your page’s URL in a content management system like Wordpress or Typepad, just use the keywords as your post title before you save the post for the first time. Once you have save the page and created the URL, you can enter the actual title of your post and save it without altering the URL. If you have questions, check with your webmaster.

Include your keyword in your post title

A copywriter has two jobs when it comes to a post title. First, work in the keyword to get Google’s attention. Second, write an eye-catching title that piques the interest of prospects and customers, and causes them to click on the Google link.  Remember the 3-30-3 Rule. We have three seconds to get attention; if we can get the web readers’ attention, we earn about 30 seconds of their time; if we can keep their interest for 30 seconds, we can earn another three minutes or more. This process starts with working the keyword into the title, and encouraging Google to flag it for the client’s prospects to find. Google is more than just a search engine; it is a form of social proof. When a web page appears at or near the top of a search, Google is essentially recommending the page to the user. It’s a form of “word of mouth,” and that makes it a powerful tool for marketing and sales.
You may notice that my headline uses “Google” instead of the keywords “SEO” or “search engine optimization.”  That’s because in general my customers and prospects are not familiar with those keywords. But they know Google, and I’m counting on Google to recognize that went I say “Google” in this context, I mean “SEO.” It’s a small risk, but there’s little point in attracting Google’s attention but missing the audience’s attention.  I will keep an eye on my Google Analytics. If I see Google is bypassing this page, I’ll change the title to one that Google likes better.

Work your keyword into your post's text

But do it judiciously and logically. If you use the keyword too many times, Google will think you are stuffing your text, and will downgrade your page. A good rule of thumb is to include your keyword in the first paragraph, and again in the second or third paragraph. After that, use your exact keyword sparingly, about once every 200 words or so. Feel free to use synonyms, or phrase variations, or even some of the runner-up keywords that came out of your research. Once you get past the title and the first couple of paragraphs, focus your efforts on creating a useful, informative, entertaining web page that your customers will enjoy and share. That’s the kind of page that Google is looking to recommend.

Include your keyword in your page’s meta description

Of the six simple things we can do, this is the one that requires a little understanding about how web pages are built.  The content management systems that create web pages – like Wordpress and Typepad – are designed to include a brief, 160-word description of each page. This is essentially an executive summary designed for Google’s benefit. It is one more way that Google finds and ranks pages.
This is usually an easy process. You may be able to take the first two or three paragraphs of your text, and boil them down to 160 words or fewer.  Assuming your are in Wordpress, go to your dashboard, then go to “posts,” then go to the post you are writing.  Scroll down to the metadata form, and drop in your summary, and save it. If you can’t find the metadata form, ask your webmaster to add the form to your dashboard. If you are using another system, talk to your webmaster about establishing a process for adding a description to every future post.
Here is the meta description I added to this post:

Are Google and other search engines ignoring your online business-to-business content? Here are six simple things you can do right now to improve the SEO – search engine optimization – for your B2B web pages.  Anyone can do this. You don’t need to be a web geek.

Add your keyword and your runner-ups as your page’s meta tags

In the metadata form, you will find a form for adding individual keywords as “tags” to help Google and other search engines find your page. Just create a list, separating each keyword or phrase with a comma, copy it, and paste it into the form, then save it. You can add, subtract or alter this list as needed. Don’t get carried away. Focus on the keywords that are most important.
Here are my tags for this page: SEO for B2B, SEO copywriting for B2B companies, B2B, business to business, SEO, search engine optimization, B2B SEO, B2B copywriting, SEO copywriting, B2B-SEO copywriting, B2B copy, SEO copy, B2B content

Bonus tip

If you really want to improve your page’s SEO, ask your really good customers or friends to create links to your page. They can do this via their hub sites, or on Facebook, or through re-tweets, or by recommending your page on Reddit, or by adding links to any other online medium.
Ask your webmaster to include sharing tools to every post on your B2B web site. Sharing tools allow readers to easily create links to your post via social media. The easier it is to share your post, the more likely readers are to do it.
All of this is very, very important to improve your SEO for your B2B content. For Google, a link is a vote. It tells Google that others consider your page to be an authoritative source of valuable information about a specific subject.
Links make it easier for Google to rank your page highly.

Which reminds me

If you found this page useful, please share it with your friends or peers. You can use the sharing tools on this page, or you can add a link to your home page.
Many thanks for your consideration.

Infographic: How to create videos your audience actually wants to watch

How to craft emotional messages to put into your content

From the Harvard Business Review:

If strong emotional activation is the key to viral success, how can brands best craft highly emotional messages with their content. 

First, think carefully about how your company, product or service is related to a topic or topics that taps into deep-seated human emotions within your target demographic. 

The goal is to find the link to an issue that plagues your consumers and relates directly or even tangentially to your brand or product. At the same time, you must make sure that the topic you choose also positively reflects the position of your brand. Using the example of the Dove Face Sketch campaign mentioned above, it is clear that its viral success was the result of its ability to tap into a deep emotional reaction to commonly felt feelings of inadequacy and low self esteem. Dove created a positive emotional reaction by creating solidarity through their campaign. Their content delivered the message “Many women don’t see themselves for how pretty they really are — let’s change that.” Dove’s content engaged strong emotions – even difficult emotions – but managed to win by presenting a more important overarching idea.

Why your Twitter bio is important

From Mashable:

 "Your Twitter bio should position you as an expert in your field who serves a specific audience," states Dan Schawbel, author of Promote Yourself and Me 2.0. 

"The objective is to position your personal brand so you're using the right keywords and clearly showing what your focus is so people read it and know exactly what you do and whom you serve." 

As well as widening your appeal for potential followers, Schawbel suggests this tactic may help your future job prospects. 

"I did a study with American Express and we found that 65% of managers are looking to hire and promote subject matter experts. The problem is that most people position themselves as generalists or 'Jacks-of-all-trades,' and that won't work in this economy," he says.

Why is online video so important for content marketing? Here's a video that outlines what the research says

Here's short video showcasing new data from Pew Research that emphasizes the rising importance of online video:

The Content Marketing Institute issued its 2014 report on content marketing among business-to-business companies; here's 10 interesting things the report has to say

10 things we learned from the 2014 report on B2B content marketing

View more lists from Rusty Cawley

What does Google Hummingbird mean for content marketing?

From Jason Williams at the Inbound Marketing Blog:

SEO’s from around the world are dissecting and testing the new search algorithm on test sites to check for anything that could concern clients. But since being released over a month ago with little to no impact on the search engine optimization community, it is likely that there is nothing to worry about. 

One thing we’ve always recommended to our clients is to always be asking and answering your client’s questions within your site. As search queries get more complicated and algorithms have the ability to find more complex results, answering the questions your clients are asking can only help you in the future. Here’s what I’m talking about… 

• Create a list the top 10 questions your clients are asking you or about your industry 
• Create new pages on your site centered around those questions and great answer 

Answering your clients’ questions helps them solve a problem and can ultimately make you an authority on a topic or subject. When they are ready to buy your product or service, they want to buy from a trusted authority. It appears that Google’s Hummingbird algorithm may just give an advantage in search results to the people that answer the common questions for their clients. As for now, Hummingbird appears to be as sweet as it sounds.

Why blog? Here's what the data says

Found at Hubsport:

Why longer articles will rank better on Google than short articles in 2014

From Jayson DeMers at the Search Engine Journal:

Not long ago, you could publish a couple 500-word blog posts per week and gain measurable traffic and authority with Google. While short articles do still have value, there’s definitely a trend within Google toward favoring longer content. 

In the future, I expect that articles will need to be a minimum of 1,000 words in length to rank well in Google, and better yet if they’re over 2,000 words. Google’s new in-depth article section is a good indicator of where things are going. According to Google, “Users often turn to Google to answer a quick question, but research suggests that up to 10% of users’ daily information needs involve learning about a broad topic.”

Why social media are neither cheap nor easy

Hugh Stephens blogs at Ragan's PR Daily:

Social media requires a significant investment to start and sustain. That includes internal costs (resourcing, training) and often external costs (marketing to consumers, prizes for your communities and even a consultant or two). 

But the attitude that you can easily create a social media strategy for an organization with more than $10 million in turnover in a half-day workshop is ludicrous. Sure, it's doable for a tiny nonprofit, but not for a large brand in need of a strategy that will reach across many marketing channels for a vast range of products.

Similarly, the idea that no one department can own social media is nearsighted. Yes, you have a PR department that manages media inquiries, but does the PR department actually provide quotes to the media or complete interviews? Generally, no. The job of the PR department is to facilitate connections and liaise with a range of internal departments.

While some group has to own and be responsible for social media, that doesn't mean that a small, defined group controls the purview of social media.

Google+: How four B2B tech companies are embracing the platform

From Nicholette Beard at the Top Rank blog:

While sports teams, news outlets, car companies, universities, non-profits and the entertainment industry dominate the top 200 business pages on Google+, a growing number of B2B technology companies have embraced Google+ as well. 

As with any top consumer brand, consistent engagement is crucial to success. B2B technology brands are developing relationships with prospects just like on any other social platform. In the world of optimizing customer experience across the B2B sales cycle,  Google+ for businesses offers B2B  marketers an opportunity to connect with buyers in a meaningful way and provide relevant information. 

Thought leaders and subject matter experts increasingly serve as trusted sources to help business buyers determine the best solution to solve a business need. Knowledge and expertise combined with social media have trumped the peer influencers of the traditional buyer, giving rise to the “B2B Social Buyer”.

Let’s take a look at some well-known B2B technology brands taking advantage of this new type of buyer who sources information and networks on Google+

Learners, shoppers and buyers: Create content for all 3 audiences

Advice from Remington Begg at Hubspot:

Too often, marketers go "straight for the throat." Typically, they only include CTA's (calls-to-action) that are for prospects that are ready to buy now (i.e. “Buy Now,” “Request a Consultation,” or "Call Today"). By modifying your website to have a balance of content, CTAs, and lead generation opportunities for every step of the buying cycle, you will find a huge increase in engagement and conversions on your site. 

Inbound marketers often refer to the steps of the buying cycle as:Top of the Funnel, or TOFU Middle of the Funnel, or MOFU Bottom of the Funnel, or BOFU.
When talking to new clients we like to describe each of these buying cycles as Learners (TOFU), Shoppers (MOFU), and Buyers (BOFU). Call them whatever makes the most sense to you.

• An example of a Learner or (TOFU) prospect is someone searching Google for "best midsize family car."

• An example of a Shopper or (MOFU) prospect is someone searching Google for "crossover SUV reviews."

• An example of a Buyer or (BOFU) prospect is someone searching Google for "Ford Edge for sale."

Think about what content you've created on your website that helps the "Learner" learn about why there is a need for your product or service. Think about what pain points it addresses. Now, think about opportunities to nurture your prospect to the Shopper stage, and then the Buyer stage, and then rinse and repeat for each of your services. Each step of the way there are opportunities to convert leads, with tools from the inbound content toolbox: ebooks, whitepapers, webinars -- you name it.

How to use hashtags to tell your story

From Ohad Frankfurt at Social Media Today:

Recently I had the pleasure to spend almost a month in Berlin with my entire team over at Swayy, we wanted to post photos from our trip in a way that will help us tell our story in the form of a photo album, so what we did was create a hashtag: “#SwayyingBerlin” - and add it to each photo we upload. That way our Facebook, Instagram and Twitter followers could see a photo album of our trip once they clicked or searched for that hashtag. 

7 tips for writing your first Kindle book

From Copyblogger:

A Kindle book doesn’t have to be mega-long. 10,000 words is a good length; some books are even shorter. 

Writing a book is like creating a series of blog posts around one theme. Each blog post becomes a chapter that builds on the previous chapter. 

I can’t tell you that writing your first book is easy, but with some help just about any good content creator can do it. Here are my 7 most useful tips:

1. Write for one reader. When you know your ideal reader, you know how much she already knows. You can avoid boring her with obvious information; you can use a dash of the humor she appreciates; and you can provide exactly the information she’s looking for.
2. Choose a topic you know well. Having to do research will considerably slow you down.
3. Outline your book. I used old-fashioned index cards on which I wrote down the What, Why, and How for each chapter. It helped me stay on track.
4. Use a straightforward headline for the title, like 7 Days to Reaching a [Specific Goal]. My book describes a simple 6-step process for writing web copy.
5. Write the book’s sales page before you start writing. It helps you remember exactly what benefits you want to deliver to your readers.
6. Find a few friendly readers who match your ideal reader profile and give them your first draft. Not only will they help make your book better, it will also boost your confidence.
7. Find a writing buddy or a coach. Writing a book can feel scary, terrifying even. Talking to someone who understands will help you overcome fear.

4 common traits of great content

From B2B Digital Marketing:

Great content is:

• Educational (or entertaining). You come away wiser or with your cares temporarily melted away.

• Empowering. Great content is more than just actionable, it empowers you to do something you couldn’t have done before.

• Emotional. It makes you feel something, not just know something.

• Respectful of your time. It accomplishes the above without dragging on.

5 steps to using Instagram more efficiently

From Chelsea Hejny at Ragan's: 

Instagram is a lot like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest, i.e., it can be a total time-suck.
It’s super easy to get distracted from doing things that are not work related, so I’m offering these tips for productively using the popular photo- and video-sharing platform. 

Ten minutes a day is all you need to manage your brand’s Instagram account. Here’s what you need to know to make the most of Instagram without wasting a minute ...

Advertising vs. content marketing: What do the numbers say?

From Marketo via PR Daily:

3 reasons why apps fail to work for content marketing -- and why web sites will survive

From Copyblogger:

There’s one thing that people turn to the Internet for en masse that apps are not better for, and that’s freely available content. When it comes to content marketing (as opposed to data like flight schedules), there’s no beating the open web. 

Most of the content we consume is not what we already subscribe to. We discover and search for new content daily, and we expect to be able to experience it without downloading an app. 

Luckily, cutting-edge mobile-responsive websites are faster, more user-friendly, and more powerful than ever. And with HTML5, a webpage can be built to perform any function an app can. 

On the other hand, putting your content in a traditional app means:

• Your content is invisible to search engines.
• Your content is blocked from seamless social sharing.
• You’re asking people to download an app before they’ve experienced your content, which will sharply diminish your audience-building efforts.

That’s a really bad idea.

VIDEO: What can we learn from the best Vines of 2013?

Really, I"m asking. If this compilation of 77 Vines drew more than 12 million viewers, what can we -- as content marketers and PR pros -- learn from them? What are the best practices, if any?

 

 Comments?

VIDEO: A lesson in how to tell your brand's story ... from Kevin Spacey

From the Content Marketing Institute:

If you haven’t seen this video from actor and House of Cards star Kevin Spacey, it’s worth the five minutes of your time. The speech, edited and served up by the folks at Telegraph UK, contains a road map for brand storytelling worthy of global enterprise brands.

Here are some key insights, derived directly from the words of Kevin Spacey, that all content marketers need to take to heart ...

Why Google's new In-Depth Article feature is great news for the public relations profession

From Ragan's PR Daily:

The longer form has the added benefit of providing an opportunity for PR firms and their clients to tell a longer, nuanced version of their story.

Of course, no publication worth its salt is going to publish a 4,000-word puff piece. Enticing publications with first-time exclusive offers to interview a CEO and being willing to admit mishaps and mistakes—as long as you have the opportunity to explain those mistakes—will yield more positive results.

Assuming Google keeps this feature moving forward, it’s easy to envision PR firms dedicating resources and creating long-form news bureaus as a boutique product/service. Google will likely keep toying with the algorithm to include and exclude more in-depth publications, including some online-only and newly formed investigative outlets. Keeping track of these developments; adjusting your strategy accordingly will be extremely important to any PR strategy.

The only 7 ways to coin a brand name

According to Christopher Johnson, Ph.D., linguist at the University of California at Berkeley, a consultant with Lexicon Branding, and the author of “Microstyle: The Art of Writing Little,” they are:

1. Reapply an existing word or phrase (Apple, Yahoo, Amazon, Greyhound, BlackBerry, Constant Contact, 3 Musketeers, Back to Basics, Flikr, Tumblr, CoolPix).
2. Combine two words (YouTube, WordPress, Juicy Fruit).
3. Blend part of one word with another (Pinterest, Febreeze, Nescafe, Pennzoil, Technorati, Rubbermaid, Travelocity).
4. Add a prefix or a suffix to an existing word (Slurpee, iTunes, Friendster, Q-tips).
5. Create a word from arbitrary syllables (Xerox, Advil, Exxon, LEGO).
6. Make a play on words (Hobby Lobby, Toys ‘R’ Us, Bubble Yum, Head & Shoulders, Lean Cuisine).
7. Invent an acronym (IBM, CBS, Alcoa, Geico).

10 keywords that readers avoid

From the Marketing Words Copywriting Blog: Here are 10 words often used in email subject lines that, according to research, are more likely to influence readers to delete your message than to open it.

• Only
• Learn
• Report
• Today
• Webinar
• Get
• Register
• Don’t Miss
• Re:
• Fw:

How to predict if a brand will spread by word of mouth

From the Bulldog Reporter, about a new study from American Marketing Association:

The analysis that appears in the August 2013 issue of the American Marketing Association's Journal of Marketing Research shows that the nature of word-of-mouth is fundamentally different between offline conversations and online discussions. While the main motivation of consumers to spread the word on brands in offline conversations is to share emotions such as excitement and dissatisfaction, in online discussions, which usually involves "broadcasting" to many people (e.g., Twitter), their main driver is to express their uniqueness and status. 

Consider, for example, the role of product differentiation—an attribute that received much attention in marketing and economics due to its strategic role in competition. This study suggests that by mentioning a highly differentiated brand in a conversation the consumers can express her uniqueness. 

Thus, it is expected that (1) the higher level of differentiation, the higher is the word-of-mouth, and (2) that this relationship is stronger in an online setting.

How to work with a copywriter: 3 tactics for marketers

From Ritka Puri at The Content Strategist: 

With the rise of branded content, many marketers find that they have a new management challenge — working with writers. After all, it’s a unique breed. Decent writers know the rules, but great writers are willing to bend them a bit. They’re idea machines who bring a breath of fresh air to brand content that no press release could ever come close to matching. 

But content marketers and brand strategists often aren’t used to working with writers — and many writers are wholly unfamiliar with a corporate environment. Here are a few guidelines for efficiently managing the marketer-writer relationship so that everyone’s better-served and more productive.

How to proofread your copy effectively and efficiently

From Mark Nichol at Ragan's:

Proofreading is the last line of defense for quality control in print and online publishing. Be sure to conduct a thorough proofread of all documents before they are printed for distribution and of all Web pages before they go live, using these guidelines.

Yes, proofreading is boring.  It's also professional. And that's what count.

Why your content should always include a call to action

From Sonia Simone at Copyblogger: 

This is the one that will make you feel like you’re an infomercial when you’re doing it, but to your audience it will seem entirely natural and normal. 

When you want your audience to take a particular action (like calling you, signing up for your list, or clicking the Add to Cart button), tell them exactly what to do. 

It’s worth paying attention to how infomercials handle this. Normally the message is “Call 1-800-CHEESE-ME” which is emphasized with repetition (see above). You’ll often find that at the end of the infomercial, you can repeat the phone number yourself by heart, it’s been so clearly and frequently re-stated. 

Subtlety is a lousy quality in a call to action. Make it unmistakably clear, make it prominent, and don’t be scared to repeat it.

Rethinking Twitter: How to make it attractive

VIDEO: How to get links and social shares in four steps

Rand Fish at moz.com explains how to apply the principle of reciprocity to encourage folks to share your social objects with others.

Why your company needs a Chief Content Officer

Brad Shorr at the Content Marketing Institute explains::

Content marketing is a fairly new discipline and, as such, it is not yet fully understood within most organizations. For any program to get off the ground and stay aloft, it must have an internal champion. In many firms, the champion (or champions) are the CEO and/or a top marketing executive; some firms have even taken the step of creating the position of CCO, or Chief Content Officer. 

Among the responsibilities that fall under program leadership are:

• Determining objectives
• Guiding and articulating strategy
• Evaluating messaging themes
• Determining priorities, goals, milestones, and measurements of performance

Leaders must be effective communicators within the organization and must also have a solid, hands-on understanding of the sales process and customer needs. They need to keep their fingers on the pulse of content marketing best practices, because they are changing and growing more sophisticated at a very rapid rate.

How YouTube's MixBit differs from Twitter's Vine

From Kit Eaton at Fast Company:

MixBit's differentiator is hinted at in its name--instead of merely being able to share, view, and comment on videos from the stream or from people you follow on the service, you can also add to and remix content uploaded by other users or yourself. Remixed videos can be up to an hour long, which may make the app appeal to the kind of creative video minds that are into sweded clips or for users who want to string together their own mini-films.

The power of Like: Is a blog post popular just because it's popular?

To help answer that question, researchers led by MIT came up with an experiment to manipulate reader comments, The New York Times reports:

“The experiment performed a subtle, random change on the ratings of comments submitted on the site over five months: right after each comment was made, it was given an arbitrary up or down vote, or — for a control group — left alone. 

“The first person reading the comment was 32 percent more likely to give it an up vote if it had been already given a fake positive score. There was no change in the likelihood of subsequent negative votes. Over time, the comments with the artificial initial up vote ended with scores 25 percent higher than those in the control group.” 

One researcher said the test shows how "very small signals of social influence snowballed into behaviors like herding.”  

You can read the entire story here.

Why Vine is like Twitter is like Facebook is like Instagram

Ron Faris of Virgin Mobile on NPR's All Things Considered:

"Vine is no different than Twitter, is no different from Facebook, is no different from Instagram. They're all water coolers. The more you're able to contribute to that community, the more that community will learn to consider your products and services especially if they've never heard of you before."

How empathy can improve your storytelling skills

From Anna Li at Poynter.:

“Journalists naturally need to be empathetic,” Leticia Britos Cavagnaro told Poynter via Skype. Britos Cavagnaro, adjunct faculty at Stanford School of Engineering’s Technology Ventures Program and associate director of National Center for Engineering Pathways to Innovation (Epicenter), co-teaches the d.school’s creativity and innovation class with Tina Seelig. Most people come to a “story with an idea, a perspective or a hypothesis,” she said; being empathetic means having the “ability to talk to someone and really let go of those preconceptions.” 

The goal of empathy is to gain insight or “put myself in the shoes of the other person or the many different stakeholders,” Britos Cavagnaro said. Use empathy by asking open-ended questions and actively listening to uncover people’s needs and motivations. Asking “Why?” often is effective. 

Northwestern University Knight Lab’s Miranda Mulligan said in an in-person interview that it’s important to challenge your assumptions and test whether they’re valid. 

Ask yourself: What would my audience like to know?

3 reasons why good writing is important to your social media success

From Lauren Mikove at Social Media Today:

1. Passive verbs and sentence structures add unnecessary words to your posts and make them longer. Statistically, shorter posts generate higher engagement. If you don't mind a longer post, tidying up your tenses makes room for additional information.
2. Active verbs make your writing more direct and exciting, and your calls to action clearer.
3. Subject agreement eliminates confusion. Yes, we may know what you intended to say, but subject confusion will make many fans re-read a post. Confusion drives down engagement in the form of retweets, favorites, likes and shares. (Although it might earn a comment or two from grammar-conscious folks.)

How to use a hashtag to create a perpetual conversation

Rohit Bhargava tells this story at the Influential Marketing Blog:

Several years ago a group of marketers working in the healthcare industry were planning to attend the rapidly growing South By Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival in Austin, but felt frustrated at the lack of panels and conversation devoted to the topic of healthcare. Wanting a good alternative, they banded together to create their own show they called South By Social Health (SXSH). 

For weeks they used the #sxsh tag (and a secondary tag of #hcsm – “health care social media”) to bring the conversation together. For years after the event, both tags continued to be used to bring digital healthcare conversations together. What’s the lesson for brands? 

Sometimes a hashtag can offer the ultimate means to foster a conversation on a topic broader than your brand, and let you do it in a way that can last far beyond any one campaign.

Four steps to discovering your newscraft story

Here's an excerpt from my latest book, "Newscraft: How to produce brand-journalism content that attracts customers and sells more product."

Getting through the research phase may seem tedious, but it is essential. The good news is this process will shorten greatly if you write several times for the same client, or if you work in a niche like health, or fashion, or finance.

But let’s assume we have a new client in an unexplored field. How do we approach the research?

My approach to research is adapted from the three years I worked as a financial reporter for the Dallas Business Journal.  I took on the beat knowing little or nothing about the world of finance. By the time I left the DBJ to join Levenson Public Relations, I had written extensively about commercial banks, thrifts, credit unions, investment banks, merchant banks, venture capital, stocks, bonds, initial public offerings, reverse IPOs, leveraged buyouts, angel capital, equity events, turnarounds, and that’s just off the top of my head.

Each time I wrote about one of those subjects for the first time, I had to bone up on the subject. It was more difficult then than it is today.  We didn’t have Google (though we did have Yahoo and Alta Vista). We didn’t have Wikipedia. So I would usually search for whatever I could find online (usually scraps of background information I had to knit together into a whole). I would also look for books on Amazon and documents on government sites.  Much of the financial world is highly regulated, so there tends to be a lot of background material available from state and federal agencies.

Once I had a working knowledge, I would look for an expert in the subject who would be willing to brief me over a lunch or over drinks.  Only then did I feel ready to pursue an actual news story on that particular subject.

Home-court advantage

As a brand journalist, you have a major advantage. A lot of that information is yours for the asking from your client’s archives and your client’s in-house experts.  Whatever you can’t get from your client is now readily available through Google and Wikipedia.

Usually your clients know the product they want you to promote. They often already know the audience they want to target. You can get about 80 percent of what you need just by studying whatever the marketing department has already generated: studies, fact sheets, brochures, white papers, Power Points, advertisements, radio commercials, TV commercials and such.

Rarely does a client ask the brand journalist to generate these materials. Most often, the client is just looking for you to present the most important, most interesting, more pertinent, more persuasive, most saleable elements of all this information in a way that most appeals to customers.

So ask. Then go study.

When I’m going through these materials, I’m using a highlighter and I’m taking notes.  What am I looking for?

The four goals of your research

When you start your research, there are four primary things you looking to find:

1. A general understanding of the problems that the product solves, and how it solves them.
2. A general understanding of the product’s market, and how the product is matching up against the competition, and any under-served niches within the market that the client’s marketing may have missed or ignored.
3. A specific understanding of the wants and needs of the product’s customers: What problems do they have that the product can solve?
4. A specific understanding of what your clients want to accomplish with their story: What specific audience do they want to influence and what action do they want that audience to take?

Once you understand your goals, you may not find the research quite so tedious. I actually enjoy research. I act like an archeologist, digging interesting artifacts out of stacks of company materials, and then arranging what I find into a story that will capture an audience. That’s what journalists do. We dig out stories and put them on display. It’s a hell of a lot of fun, and certainly more satisfying than writing news releases.

I approach my research in four phases.  You’ll get about 80 percent of what you need from reading and watching whatever the company has generated about the product for both internal and external audiences. You’ll get the other (and vital) 20 percent from talking to people in and around the company: the product’s designers, its marketing chief, its PR team, its copywriters and designers and its salesmen.

So here are the four steps I use to gather my research:

First: Study every document you can about the product, both internal and external.

The process of creating a new product – from research to development to production to marketing – creates a stream of materials: reports, white papers, brochures, advertisements, slide decks, web pages, research materials, speeches, presentations, and more.  Get your hands on everything you can and study it diligently.

Even a new product will produce volumes of market research and product reports. Get them. Read them.

David Ogilvy, one of the great copywriters of the 1950s, started his research with the product. He would get copies of everything his client had produced about a product the client wanted to advertise.  He would hole up in his study at home and just read, read, read.  His goal was to internalize the information until he saw a benefit he could hone into an appeal that would sell the product.

“The more you know about it, the more likely you are to come up with a big idea for selling it,” he says in “Ogilvy on Advertising,” a book you should definitely read. “When I got the Rolls-Royce account, I spent three weeks reading about the car and came across the statement that ‘at sixty miles an hour, the loudest noise comes from the electric clock.’ This became the headline, and it was followed by 607 words of factual copy.”

You can find Ogilvy’s Rolls-Royse ad online.  It is generally considered a classic of 1960s advertising. You should study this and other Ogilvy advertisements carefully, because we will apply several of his techniques to creating the newscraft story.

Second: Ask a lot of questions about the product.

Document all its features and its benefits.

A feature is a specific aspect of the product.  A benefit is what it does for the customer. (A car may have a V-8 engine (feature), but the benefit is that it allows the customer to drive like a bat out of hell.)

Work hard to identify the most important benefit. But keep in mind that “most important” can change with the target customer.

Look for qualities like reliability, durability, economy, luxury and efficiency. How do those qualities stack up against the completion?

Is this a niche product or a mass product? What qualities does it have that the competition has missed?

Try to find someone is the company who is an expert on this specific product. Talk to the guy to lead the product’s development, or to someone who is selling the product in the field. They know a lot of things that never shows up in the marketing materials.

Third: Ask about the target audiences.

  

Who buys this product? Who is it meant to serve? What motivates customers to buy this product over the competition?

Remember, you are looking for something interesting that you can present as either a How-To story or a Ways-To story. Look for anything out of the ordinary. Are customers successfully using the product in unexpected ways to cure unexpected problems? Is there a problem the product solves that hasn’t been promoted heavily? Look for outliers. They can be gold.

But don’t just listen to the folks at headquarters. Go outside. Talk to the customers. Definitely talk to the companny’s frontline sales pros. They may have found uses or qualities that the client’s marketing department has missed entirely.

Branding pioneers Jack Trout and Al Ries call this “going down to the front.”  This means to go into the mind of the customer by observing behavior and asking questions.

“You are looking for an angle,” Trout and Ries say in their book “Bottom-Up Marketing,” one of their lesser-known books, but one you should own. “A fact, an idea, a concept, an opinion on the part of the prospect that conflicts with positions held by your competitors.”

The angle you are looking for is a common or emerging problem that customers can solve using your client’s product or service.

That angle is the nugget around which you can build your story

.

Tony Schwartz, a highly regarded broadcast copywriter during the 1960s, called this process “pre-search.”  The goal, he said, is to find out as much as possible about a specific audience: Their dreams, their desires, their problems, their opinions and their attitudes. This information, he said, helps you to hone a message that resonates with this audience. If a message resonates with an audience, then the audience is far more likely to agree with the message and act upon it.

By the way, Schwartz wrote a book you should have in your library and you should study often: “The Responsive Chord.” It is out of print, but you can buy a used copy online.

Fourth: Find out what your client expects from your article.

Have a candid discussion with your clients. Ask point blank: What do you want customers to do after they read this story?” What is the call to action? Do we want them to:

• Race down to the store and buy the product?
• Ask for more information via a toll-free number or a web site?
• Share the story with their friends and family?
• Embrace the brand?
• Try using the product in a new way?
• Buy the product in greater quantities?

You have to know what the client wants your story to accomplish. Without that information, you can’t judge your success. You can’t hit a target you can’t see.

As a brand journalist, you will apply both Schwartz’s and Ogilvy’s approaches to research.  You will carefully study the audience that your client wants to reach. You will also carefully study the product your client wants to sell.

Your job is to find a connection between the two. You have to find something in the product that resonates with customers. Something they will find interesting. Something they will want to act upon right now. And you will have to find a news peg that will catch the customers’ attention and cause them to want to read your story right now.

Creating that connection between the product and the customer is everything: Catch their attention. Spark their interest. Keep their interest from beginning to end. Inspire them to act on what they learn.

That’s the job of the newscraft.

4 virtues of great mobile sites (that also apply to desktop)

Jason Kosarek at HubSpot blogs:

1. Concise. Never use 5 words when it takes 3. On a mobile screen those 2 extra words take up valuable inches. And wherever your reader's coming from, nobody likes needless reading.
2. Definite Hierarchy of Needs. The most valuable information goes to the top. Always. Don’t expect your user to dig to find what they need. Make it easy for them.
3. Better Navigation. Don’t waste the most valuable part of your page with your navigation. Find a nice little UX trick like garyvanderchuck.com or contentsmagazine.com to solve it. Once you do this, the navigation also needs to be simple and easy to follow. (Hint: The navigation also needs to be good for fat thumbs).
4. Clear Content. When you use industry jargon, you're killing your website. When you beat around the bush, you're killing your website. When you convolute things your visitor cares about with things your company cares about, you're killing your website. On desktop, or mobile.

Why you should create a trailer for the new YouTube layout

Gloria Rand blogs: 

One of the keys to successful video marketing is getting subscribers. First, you have to win them over. The new YouTube channel layout provides you the opportunity to feature a trailer that only plays when non-subscribed viewers land on your channel. This is your chance to let them know what your channel is all about and encourage them to subscribe.Why 

If you do any type of videos for your business, I encourage you to create a video trailer ASAP! Don’t let this precious real estate go to waste on your channel. You don’t have to have a slickly made trailer either to be effective. (Although it doesn’t hurt!) Just make sure you have enough light, a simple background and keep your message short. And, very important – remember your call to action: ask the viewer to subscribe to your channel.

3 reasons why infographics can attract traffic to your site

Marcela De Vivo at SocialFish says::

Other than it being a way to simplify concepts and ideas for your readers, there are several other reasons to use infographics on your site.

1. Readers are drawn to your site. It doesn’t matter what you’re trying to explain—when people see fun graphics, they are instantly more prone to look at your site.
2. Using infographics increases backlinks. If you want to be the site that others link to for your easy explanations of complex ideas, start using well-designed infographics. This gets your page a lot more recognition.
3. You can be a more useful site. Every site should want to be useful to their readers, and infographics are a great way to do this. The easier people are able to understand who you are, the more readers come back.

5 reasons why a story is better than a list

Andy Crestodina makes his case at Copyblogger:

Our minds are wired for stories. They are fundamental to human experience and understanding. When’s the last time you read a list that made you laugh or cry?

1. Stories create a feeling of discovery. They can surprise and delight readers. Andrew Stanton of Pixar tells us in his TED Talk to “Make the audience put things together. Don’t give them four. Give them 2+2.
2. Stories have conflict and resolution. This structure creates suspense and holds readers’ attention.
3. Stories have characters. This humanizes the topic through voice and personality.
4. Stories make people care. By answering the all-important why questions, stories have the power to inspire readers. Why do you do what you do? Why do you love it?
5. Stories allow the reader to empathize. This creates a connection between the audience and the content that is otherwise impossible.

My take: Surprising and delighting audiences is all well and good. You can make them laugh. You can make them cry. But if your stories fail to contribute to selling them something, then you are going to have a very short life as a copywriter for paying clients. Lists sell better than stories. The exception is the case study, which can (when properly designed) convert prospects into customers.

Stop writing for Google and start writing for people

Arnie Kuenn at the Content Marketing Institute blogs:

First and foremost, your website content should always be written to provide value for your audience. If you’re still writing for search engines, you may be making the following errors:

• Focusing on high-volume keywords: If you’re a little fish in the sea of your industry, it doesn’t make sense to compete against the big sharks. Small businesses have a much harder time gaining traction with high-volume keywords, as the competition is so fierce. To overcome this, focus on long-tail keywords (keyword phrases with three or more words) that still have a respectable search volume.

• Elevating your keyword density: When it comes to keywords, less can be more. Stuffing keywords into every other sentence may have worked in the past, but now, it’s definitely frowned upon. Add keywords where it makes sense, but don’t focus on achieving a certain density percentage.

• Creating content in “production mode:” Many businesses say that producing enough content is one of their top challenges but, again, “less” can sometimes offer more when it comes to creating content. Churning out content left and right isn’t sustainable and will most likely result in mediocre content, at best. Instead, focus on creating fewer content pieces that are of higher quality, and build that evergreen content for more durable reach and engagement.

Why you should optimize your site for both search engines and mobile devices

Matthew Young writes on the Bruce Clay Inc blog:

A recent study on mobile search activity showed that 1 in 3 mobile queries are local, and after looking up local business on a smartphone, 61 percent of users called a business and 59 percent actually visited a business. 

Other telling statistics from the report include:

• 79 percent of smartphone users use their smartphones to help with shopping.
• 71 percent of smartphone users that see TV, press or online ad, do a mobile search for more information, but 79 percent of large online advertisers still do not have a mobile optimized site.

There is marketing power in these statistics and even Google is getting on board mobile SEO in a big way. It doesn’t take much reading between the lines to know that if Google is an advocate, then we should be too.

Why you learned everything you need to know about storytelling from Cinderella

Sean D'Souze at Copyblogger uses the story of Cinderella to illustrate how to write a a story that your audiences will actually read and remember:

If we examine the Cinderella story closely we see three basic elements …

1. The sequence
2. The suspense
3. The roller coaster

I argue that these same elements exist in every great story, and that it’s crucial that you write and use stories in your content marketing efforts as a way to differentiate yourself from the mass of mediocre media publishers out there.

To read more, click here.

3 things to do when your SEO isn't working

Happy Brooke says on the Moz Blog

1. Talk to your clients. Keep the relationship strong. Share your resilience with them. In no-rank land, they'll need it, too. Let their enthusiasm for and expertise in their field revitalize you.
2. Try new things. Be adventurous. Experiment with new content or approaches. Sometimes failure propels us out of the box we were stuck in when nothing else can.
3. Give yourself a break. Don't make yourself miserable by wallowing in continual blame and guilt. Everybody fails! But dwelling on it for too long will prevent you from moving forward.

If you can't create content, curate it

Rohit Bhargava says at the Influential Marketing Blog: 

Content curation is a term that describes the act of finding, grouping, organizing, or sharing the best and most relevant content on a specific issue. 

Here is the best part about content curation, though. It doesn’t require you to be a writer, or a filmmaker, or an on-screen commentator. Curation is inherently behind the scenes. What it does require, though, is expertise. It requires the ability to think and collect. They are different skills sets than creation, but in a business environment – it is far more likely that you will find someone with deep subject matter expertise in a particular industry, topic or issue. They may not necessarily be gifted writers or documentarians, but their expertise is their strength and though creating original content may be an uphill battle – curating highly valuable content available elsewhere can be a much more realistic goal.

How to embed Instagram photos and videos -- without hacking!

Instagram now offers video as well as photos. But embed the content into your site requires some understanding of HTML coding ... until now.

In this post on Hubspot, Genny Soskey provides a step-by-step tutorial.

How to combine email with social media for maximum effect

David DeVore at Content Marketing Institute says:: 

Some marketers are under the misconception that they’ve nailed a social email content strategy by placing a few social sharing buttons in their email templates. But social sharing buttons don’t make email more social — great social media content does. The self-serving sales pitch you pasted into your email template isn’t going to spread like wildfire across the internet just because you embedded a social sharing button. 

The bottom line is that if your emails are not populated with noteworthy content that’s relevant to your audience, your social sharing button is a useless waste of kilobytes, attention, and time. 

I know what you’re thinking: “Where am I supposed to find remarkable content to populate my emails?” Well, the best part of content marketing is that great content works in any channel. 

Brands should be using the social media content they’re already creating — YouTube videos, Facebook updates, Tweets, Instagram photos, blog posts, etc. — to more deeply engage email subscribers. And just as brand-made social media content can (and should) be used to power email, so too can fan or user-generated content (UGC). Comments, likes, and recommendations — everything your fans are saying about your brand — are far more believable (and effective) than anything you can possibly say about yourself.

3 reasons to ask influencers to create content for your site

Kevin Cain at Convince & Convert says

We have spent the past few years building a substantial content factory that relies heavily on influencers. Our community site, OpenView Labs, features new content from influencers every week about the topics our target audience cares about, such as sales and marketing. The benefits of doing so are threefold:

1. Getting great content for free — We regularly ask influencers to write articles for us, record videos and podcasts, or simply contribute quotes and ideas to our eBooks and reports. It certainly doesn’t get any better (or easier) than posting great content that you’re getting for free.
2. Building our brand — By virtue of the fact that these influencers are choosing to publish content on our site, they are effectively signaling their approval of OpenView. Chances are that if industry influencers think we’re worth checking out, our target audience will too.
3. Expanding our reach — Because we have content from a wide range of influencers, each of whom shares their content with their diverse groups of followers, we get people coming to the site who probably otherwise wouldn’t. We get a steady stream of new visitors to our site every day.

Two ways your content can directly support your client's sales

John Hall blogs at Forbes:

Companies don’t often think about how valuable content is in lead generation or sales unless they have a strong background in online marketing. Let’s keep it simple:

1) Use content to nurture leads. There’s nothing better to further a relationship with a potential lead than to actually give her value. If your content is valuable, then it will help her out while simultaneously drawing positive attention to your company.

2) Use content for sales conversions. If you’re working on a sale, you should know what’s holding people back. Send them an article you’ve published that supports why they would want to move forward. For example, if somebody was worried about budgeting for content marketing, I would send him a link to this article and show him how thought leadership pieces can help other marketing channels, saving him money overall.

My take: A lot of folks talk about brand journalism as if it is above generating sales. If you believe that, get over it. Brand journalism has a small window in which to establish itself as a discipline for the long term. That window will slam shut at the next recession. That's when CEOs will carefully assess what is working (that is, what is making or saving money) and what is not. If brand journalism fails to help generate leads and convert sales, it will pass into oblivion.

Why Instagram is clueless about video

Jenna Wortham at NYTimes.com:

Instagram is a yearbook of our most memorable moments, not because they’re the moments worth remembering, but because they’re the moments worth projecting and sharing. And that’s part of the reason the service is the success that it is today, with 130 million users who have uploaded more than six billion photos to the service in less than three years. 

Video, at least the amateurish footage I shot, is the antithesis of that fantasy. And as much as I think we’re getting more comfortable being ourselves online, there’s still a difference between the self you’re willing to share publicly and the self you’re willing to share when only a handful of people are watching. 

This is a distinction that Facebook — and now, by association, Instagram — has never seemed to understand.

Want to attract Google? Write 'epic content'

From Jayson DeMers at  Search Engine Journal: 

The days when you could publish 500-word pieces on your blog a couple times a week and achieve authority status are fading away. While high quality, shorter pieces still have value, I predict we’ll see a migration toward “super articles.” Longer pieces that are a minimum of 1,000 words and more likely upwards of 2,000 will become increasingly valuable. 

It’s what Neil Patel has called “epic content.” There’s several ways to approach this. If the best articles in your niche offer 50 ideas, your round-ups could offer 100. You could get access to experts, develop detailed tutorials, or supplement your content with high quality videos or images. The key is going to be to follow an approach that sets you apart from the most basic content in your space, and grabs people’s interest for the long-term. The focus is on depth, quality, and ultimate value to the reader.

Is your content team creating marketing tools -- or selling tools?

Brendan Cournover at the Content Marketing Institute says: 

If you ask me, a great strategy does both. Think about all the ways salespeople rely on content to sell:

• Via prospecting emails

• During live meetings and sales calls (hello PowerPoint!)

• As part of post-meeting follow-ups

• With updates for existing customers to encourage renewals

So where is the majority of this content coming from? Ideally, it’s the marketing team. One problem is that too many people still equate content marketing with being strictly “non-promotional.” It’s true that thought leadership content like this is great for attracting new audiences — but really? That’s all you’re going to use content for?

Now on Kindle: My new book for brand journalists and other content marketers, "Newscraft'

My new book is now available on Kindle.

It's called, "Newscraft: How to produce brand-journalism content that attracts customers and sells more products." You can sample the book on Amazon. If you are an Amazon Prime member, you can borrow it for free for the next 90 days. If you own an iPad or a iPhone, you can read it via a Kindle app.

I've occasionally blogged about newscraft over the last few months. This is my first attempt to pull together my thinking on it.

In a nutshell: Newscraft is a hybrid that blends traditional journalism methods, tested copywriting techniques and proven SEO strategies to create a 600-800 word story that attracts highly targeted readers (online or offline), converts readers into prospects, and helps your client to move products out the door.

Newscraft is an approach I've developed over the last two years and one that I use in my daily practice with my clients. It works as well for B2B and B2C.  It is also extremely flexible. You can use it to create web copy, flyers, brochures, video scripts, live demonstrations and more.

Check it out. It's just $2.99 (cheap).

If you read it, please send me your feedback.